Hydrogen passivation: a proficient strategy to enhance the optical and photoelectrochemical performance of InGaN/GaN single-quantum-well nanorods

Recently, III-nitride semiconductor nanostructures, especially InGaN/GaN quantum well nanorods (NRs), have been established as a promising material of choice for nanoscale optoelectronics and photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting applications. Due to the large number of surface states, III-nitride NRs suffer from low quantum efficiency. Therefore, control of the surface states is necessary to improve device performance in real-time applications. In this work, we investigated the effect of hydrogen plasma treatment on the optical properties of InGaN/GaN single-quantum-well (SQW) NRs. The low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) studies revealed that yellow and green emissions overlapped and the yellow band is more dominant in the pristine InGaN/GaN SQW NRs. However, the emission corresponding to yellow luminescence was strongly suppressed and the green emission is more intensified in hydrogenated InGaN/GaN SQW NRs. Furthermore, the time-resolved PL spectroscopy studies revealed that the carrier lifetimes of hydrogenated InGaN/GaN SQW NRs are relatively short compared to the pristine InGaN/GaN SQW, indicating the effective reduction of non-radiative centers. From the PEC measurement, the photocurrent density of hydrogenated InGaN/GaN SQW NRs in the H2SO4 solution is found to be 5 mA cm-2 at -0.48 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, which is 3.5-fold larger than that of pristine ones. These findings shed new light on the significance of surface treatment on the optical properties and thus nanostructured photoelectrodes for PEC applications.